One step forward, one step back...

Aaron and I have been working crazy hard to try to get going on the basement. Here is a schematic of the basement BEFORE-





Here is a schematic of the basement plan AFTER-





We got 90% of the tear-out done on Saturday, and even had to take two trucks to get everything to the dump (and we still have a big pile in the backyard). Unfortunately ,we would have been more productive, but in true "redemption weekend" style (Mike's been calling all of these weekends "redemption weekend" because this is the weekend where we will make up for all of the stuff that went wrong the last weekend, unfortunately something always goes wrong...) we hit a snag. We went to our neighbor's house (also an Aaron) to borrow his compressor, nailer, and truck. (We have such awesome neighbors.) We got all the stuff together and put it in Aaron's truck and drove it to our house to unload (we could have walked it, but it seemed like a good idea at the time...). We unloaded the tools and then got back in the truck to go to Lowe's to buy lumber and supplies for the new walls. Of course, the truck wouldn't start, wouldn't even turn over. Aaron popped the hood to see if the battery cables were loose, and they were, but unfortunately, they were also so corroded that they couldn't be tightened. When Mike showed up, we were looking at the truck trying to fix it. One hour and a trip to the auto parts store later, we had the truck up and running with new battery connections. Woo hoo! We then had to go to Home Depot AND Lowe's b/c Lowe's didn't have the right nails for the nail gun OR an affordable temporary laundry tub. By the time we got back, Mike had ripped out almost everything that needed to come out, and broken a hammer trying to bust up the old concrete laundry sink! (he didn't know where the sledgehammer was). We are SOOO lucky to have a friend who likes to destroy things! I didn't take many pictures because I have been fighting a stomach bug all weekend, but here are Mike and Aaron fixing the other Aaron's truck:





More pictures to come... Mike is having Thanksgiving with us, and may do some work on the basement on Friday.